This invention relates to a wiring arrangement for a vehicle exterior component including an electric part.
There are various kinds of exterior components fixed to a vehicle body of an automobile, among which is an electrically operated retractable door mirror. The electrically operated retractable door mirror incorporates a motor circuit for adjusting a mirror angle, a motor circuit for retracting and deploying a mirror body, and the like. Typically, the door mirror is fixed on an outer surface of the vehicle body with two or three of bolt-nut pairs, while the motor circuit or the like incorporated in the door mirror is connected via a wiring harness to a feeder circuit, a switch circuit or the like equipped in the vehicle body.
In recent years, the door mirror has been becoming multi-functional by incorporating a variety of electric parts and electric circuits such as a turn signal lamp, a foot light, a microphone, a speaker, and an antenna circuit, thus tends to have an increased number of wires in the wiring harness for connecting to the circuits in the vehicle body.
However, the increase in the number of wires in the wiring harness would add cumbersome tasks for wiring; thus proposed in Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Application, Publication No. 7-8086 was a technique for making it possible to transmit various kinds of operating signals to a variety of the electric parts in the door mirror without requiring increased number of wires in the wiring harness.
This technique uses a signal converter circuit provided in the vehicle body to convert the operating signals of various kinds into signals each having a unique frequency which are in turn transmitted over a single wire into the door mirror in which the signals are restored by a reverse signal converter circuit and transmitted to the electric parts of various kinds.
Conventional techniques for connecting the electric parts or electric circuits incorporated in the door mirror to the feeder circuit, switch circuit or the like equipped in the vehicle body, including the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Application, Publication No. 7-8086, requires a wiring harness and a connector therefor. Accordingly, upon attachment of the door mirror to the vehicle body, the wiring harness could possibly be pinched between the door mirror and the vehicle body. This would disadvantageously cause a defect in electric connectivity such as a break or short circuit in the wiring harness, making it difficult to ensure stable quality of a door mirror system.
Another disadvantage in the conventional techniques lies in cumbersome tasks for the wiring harness, which would increase the number of assembly steps (i.e., man-powers for assembly) of the door mirror, thus raising the assembly cost.
The present invention has been made to address the above-described disadvantages, and provides a wiring arrangement for a vehicle exterior component (e.g., a door mirror) which can prevent a defect in electric connectivity to an electric part incorporated in the vehicle exterior component, and which can reduce the number of assembly steps (i.e., man-hours for assembly) of the vehicle exterior component.